Always, Almost, Never
by EvilIsntBorn337
Summary: So many times he imagined not finding her, but he never imagined finding her and having her already be lost. Canon divergence, set during(ish) the missing year.


So many times over those long months did he imagine that he would never find her – that he would scour every street and alley in New York and never see that flash of her hair that looked like the sun come to earth, or the glint of her eyes as they sparkled clear and emerald with her laughter, or the purpose in her stride as she walked down the street. He pictured never seeing her again, or seeing her and having her not remember him, or seeing her and having her remember but not feel the same way. Never did he imagine catching a glimpse of her the first time in months that felt like years, and have it be on the arm of a man who wasn't him.

It was on 34th street, and even though the woman with her back to him was laughing openly and leaning towards the man before her in a way that clearly told him they were intimate, and even though he had never seen Emma like that with _anyone_ , he knew it was her. He wished there had been a prickle of doubt, but he knew. And despite telling himself that he would wait until she was alone to approach her, to see if she remembered him, when she turned and he saw that smile – _finally_ saw it, after so many long nights tracing the specific shape of it in his mind so he would never forget – he almost strode over there regardless, almost took her in his arms so he would be sure never to lose her.

Instead, he followed them – as casually as he could, considering his outfit that drew attention wherever he went (he had no idea why, considering the getups the people in this world called clothing) – to a red brick building several blocks over. Something shifted unpleasantly in his stomach as he watched Emma give the man a long, lingering kiss, and he knew it wasn't real, this life built on memories that weren't hers, but something about this thing between Emma and the man who wasn't him was real enough that she seemed…

He didn't want to say she seemed happy, but no other word fit the smile dancing on her lips.

When she and the man parted, and she bid the man farewell, it took everything in Killian not to rush over there. This world was still new to him, but he knew enough to realize that a man dressed in black approaching a woman on a crowded street in the burgeoning evening – even if it was a woman he knew better than he knew his own heart – would not be treated lightly, or viewed well.

It killed him to watch her enter the building – walk away from him once again while all he could do was watch – but he did. On the long walk back to the room he had secured in a strange borough known as Brooklyn, he let the image of her smile light his way.

Tomorrow. He would see her tomorrow, and everything would change.

—-

That night in his small room was the longest of any he had spent there. It was pure good fortune that he had met a man with a room to let, who was willing to have Killian despite his clear ignorance about the world, and despite the fact that his payment every month was always late as the man reminded him – over and over, every month – to get his "foreign coins" exchanged for American dollars. It took a day of wandering, that first month, before he found a store willing to trade for his doubloons. The pawn broker became a regular stop, and even though giving up the coins every month felt like losing another piece of himself to this world, he knew he would give it all up for her, even if finding her was an errant hope.

As he lay awake and watched the shapes the headlights outdoors made as they striped through his blinds, he thought of how this may be his last night in this room, and that certainly this would be the last month he had to trudge down to the pawn shop to trade more of what was his for a chance at finding his happy ending. It was a thought that kept the electric rush of hope running through his veins long after his eyes started to ache with the long night, and that kept him awake to see the jaundiced night sky turn into the grey of dawn and then the faint blue of a new day.

He didn't wait for the sun to rise any higher in the sky, or for the faint sounds of his housemate waking, to signify an appropriate hour. The sun was out and he knew where she was and the days that had turned into weeks and then into months had been a long enough time to wait.

As he walked along the early morning streets, already bustling because this city truly never rested, he pictured the words he would say to her, tried to feel the shape of them in his mouth. The idea of words felt foreign to him – he hadn't spoken much since leaving the Enchanted Forest, save for a few words to his housemate and the odd shopkeeper. There was nobody in this world he had any interest in knowing, and better uses for his time than meaningless chatter with people he would eventually leave behind.

The possibility of his words clouding his thoughts, he had slipped through the door to her building behind a man in a suit rushing out, had found her name on the building directory, and was standing before her door before he realized that he still didn't know what he would say. He thought that there were perhaps no words that would map the edges of the ragged hole she had left when she crossed that town line without him, and if there were they were words she wouldn't understand – words more akin to navigation, to guiding stars, to a formless feeling of _home_.

He knocked lightly on the door, and then a moment later, pounded on it heavily. He didn't know what to say, but if he could just _see_ her…

He heard the faint music cut off from within, and despite a tendril of uncertainty creeping up his spine, a smile lit his face. And then the door was swinging open and she was _there_ – a goddess in oversized pajamas, her hair a golden halo around her head, and he did not know the depths to which he had missed her until she was standing before him as though she had never left.

"Swan." He breathed. "At last."

She hadn't said anything so he took a step towards her, but her hand shot out a moment later and his heart sunk as she said, "Whoa, do I know you?"

The smile gone, "Look, I need your help. Something's happened – something terrible. Your family is in trouble."

"My family is right here. Who are you?" And then he knew she had no memory of him – he hadn't been expecting it, really, but it still stung to know he was no more than a stranger to her.

"An old friend." He said, voice still pitched low. He didn't know that he could have managed anything more. "I know you can't remember me, but…I can make you."

He thought he had given up on hope years before, but as he surged towards her and captured her lips in his, he felt it dance in the pit of his stomach because if she felt as he did…

Her knee shot up between his legs, and his heart fell as he crumpled.

"What the hell are you doing?" She asked, voice firm and charged but still quiet as she shoved him back into the hallway wall.

"A long shot." He said. "I had to try. I was hoping you felt as I did."

"All you're going to feel is the handcuffs when I call the cops." If his heart hadn't been racing so frantically in his chest, he would have smiled – there was his Swan.

"Look, I know this seems crazy but you have to listen to me. You have to _remember_."

She slammed the door in his face, and it felt as though she had hit him with it. She really didn't remember him, and what's more she clearly felt nothing for him.

Even if he didn't have the kiss to tell him that, the telltale glint of the ring on her left hand would have told him just as well.

—-

He found her again, of course. Even with the sound of the door slamming in his face fresh in his mind, he couldn't _not_ try again – try and explain, perhaps more delicately, exactly what had happened.

It was pure luck, really, that he walked past the restaurant and spotted her on the patio. She was with that man again, and he watched them both for a moment – at the easy smile she wore around him, at the way she let him take her hand as though it was nothing. What he wouldn't have given to be in that man's place.

That faint glimmer of hope made a reappearance as the man got up to go inside the restaurant, and Killian slid in across from Emma with a formless wish held in his mind that _this time_ would be different.

It wasn't. She regarded him with suspicion, told him to leave, and had a knife in her hand before she had spoken three sentences to him. He saw a faint flicker of something as he slid Baelfire's address across the table, as he spoke of her family, but even as he told her to do it for the family he knew she had even if she didn't, she shook her head.

"I have a family, and I have a life, and you need to leave _right now_." She said, darting another glance towards the entrance to the restaurant, expecting the other man back any moment, understandably wanting his chair vacant by then. "You need to leave me alone."

The stone on her ring glinted in the candlelight, and he could hear in her voice that she wasn't willing to listen to any more. The words felt like shards of glass on the way out, but still he managed a faint, "As you wish, love."

Leaving her there felt like a defeat, but he knew he was beaten. If she didn't want him there, he wouldn't push her, even though now he felt like a ship drifting in an endless sea with no shore in sight. He had traded his ship, spend months in this land, all in hopes of finding her. Never had he imagined that when he did, it would be an Emma that was already lost to him.

—-

He hadn't planned on going to the wedding, but when he saw the notice in the personals section of the newspaper strewn about the flat, he found that he couldn't resist seeing her one more time – one _final_ time before he went…wherever a pirate went in an unfamiliar world, with no ship to call home.

When the day arrived, he lingered outside the church as people dressed in all manner of finery filtered in, and only when he saw a long white car on the horizon did he slip in the back of the church and find a seat where he could see the front but she wouldn't see him – he needed this, this final glimpse of the happy ending that was almost his, but he wouldn't ruin it for her. She had told him to leave her be, and he would. He had meant what he said.

He needn't have worried, though, because as she entered the church and made her way slowly down the aisle towards the altar and the man who wasn't him waiting there, she wasn't looking at the people filling the seats – she had eyes only for the man waiting there for her with a smile plain on his face that made Killian long for the flask he hadn't allowed himself to bring.

She reached the altar alone – Killian's felt a pull in his chest as he imagined the way David would beam as he gave her away, if he was here, if he _knew_ he had a daughter at all – and the smile on her face was all for the man who took her hand gently as she drifted into place across from him.

Crocodile be damned, Killian had never hated anyone as he hated that man in that moment.

The ceremony started but the words were just a blur, until the minster's voice rang out asking if anyone knew a reason why these two should not be wed.

A million reasons flashed through Killian's mind, and he could feel them all on his tongue, poised to spill out. Then his gaze fell on Emma again, all in white, standing beside a man in a tuxedo who was not him, and she looked…happy. Peaceful, almost, without the weight of all of Storybrooke's problems on her shoulders. She smiled at the man – Walsh, he learned, as the minister spoke – and he saw how her smile came easily, didn't feel like it had to come from a far away place to touch her lips. For once, her smiles were waiting, and this life had given that to her.

He let his reasons slip aside, and Walsh slipped a smooth gold wedding band on her finger and kissed her longer than perhaps he should, and Killian could almost feel the way it would feel to be the one up there, holding her hands, _hers_ forever.

He was almost stunned, sitting there, watching everything he had ever dared to hope for slip from his fingers. _Why_ hadn't he said something? But he knew why – because as much as it hurt, she was happy, even if wasn't with him. As she walked past him and out the door, hand in hand with Walsh, she was looking at her new husband like he was the world – like _he_ was the saviour, not her. Killian followed them out with the crowd of guests, each step harder and harder to take, and watched Walsh lead her to the car that would take her away forever – a car that was not the Bug, and even that felt wrong, somehow. But before Walsh could fold her into the passenger seat, Emma stopped in her tracks. She was frozen there under a barrage of rice, but Walsh just leaned close and whispered something to her with a smile – words the shape of which Killian could just make out: _I can't believe it's real either_.

Then he tucked her gently into the passenger seat, but there was something in Emma's eyes as he shut the door and made his way around to the driver's side. She looked down at the ring around her finger, and her hand brushed against her bottom lip. Walsh started the car, and she looked startled, but resolute. She didn't look like the happy new wife she did a moment ago. She looked like _Emma_.

Killian was tucked in the back of the crowd but, impossibly, instantly, her eyes snapped up to his.

He saw the shape of his name on her lips as the car pulled away.

—-

He spent a day waiting for her to come back – a day lingering on the steps of the church waiting for her to come to him and tell him she remembered. A day telling himself that he hadn't been imagining it – that it had been real.

It was a day that passed long and lonely, and she never came.

He went back the the flat, and even though his housemate was there and inviting him to watch some film on the television, Killian ignored him as he pulled a bottle of rum from the cupboard under the sink and disappeared into his room.

Days piled on top of one another, and Killian had forgotten what it was like to spend days, weeks, in a fog of rum. Even after Milah, it had never felt like this. He didn't know what _this_ was, but he knew that there was a hole in his chest that would never be filled with something as meaningless as revenge. He was drifting in and out of consciousness, heard his flatmate rattle the doorknob but didn't care, heard the traffic that signified a new day for the people that did more than ghost through the world searching for something they never got. He always joked that he had retained his youthful charms despite his 300 years, but those days…that whole week when there was no chance of _her_ ever again…he felt every single one of them.

He thought of her often, though. He saw her everywhere, and every time his heart sped up for a beat because maybe this time it was real.

He saw her in the way the sun slanted through his window in the mornings, and even though it awakened powerful headaches every single time, it was the brilliant gold of her hair, and for a moment he felt closer to her, like he could reach out and touch it and she would be there.

He saw her in the flashes of red that passed by on the streets – jackets and pants and hats worn not nearly as well as she had worn that crimson leather – on the afternoons when he would grow restless and wander the streets hoping to find _something_.

He saw her in the acid green of the alcohol he had been given that night the corner tavern had run out of rum and given him the strongest thing they had in consolation.

He saw her beside him at night and in the mornings, curled up on the small mattress beside him, her face a breath away as though if he shifted even an inch they would be pressed together. He had tried, once, and falling into the empty air where he thought she had been was a cruel reminder that he could not trust himself.

He saw her here before him now, crouched down, that red leather jacket hugging her body as though it had been made for her. He knew it wasn't real because of that – knew it wasn't real because as he had come to her again and again begging her to let him explain, as he had watched her leave the apartment to drop Henry at school, as he had watched her at that restaurant to meet the man who would become her husband…as he had watched her live her life, she had never once worn that jacket that had been so cherished by the Emma he knew. She had given up that part of her life, so he knew that the Emma here, now, could not be real.

"You're early, love." He said in a rough voice, holding up a nearly-full bottle of rum. "I'm usually at least halfway before you show up."

"I don't think I want to know what you mean by that." She said. He smiled a humourless smile – the Emma of his memory was as fierce as he remembered his Swan to be, before he had lost her. "But we can talk about that later."

"Bugger the talking, you demon. What do you want from me? What in bloody hell are you doing here, and why the bloody hell won't you leave me be?" He always asked – always begged to know why she was haunting him like this, why he couldn't dull the pain of losing her with a bottle of rum the way he had everything else.

She touched his knee, and though her touch was tentative, her hand was solid. This was new. She was never solid, never corporeal, never something he could _feel._

"As soon as we got in the car." She whispered, settling onto her knees a hairsbreadth away. "I knew. It took me a while to figure it out – why did I remember then, not the times you tried to tell me, not when you came to my apartment…" Colour rose to her cheeks at the memory, and all of this was new territory – the Emma of his mind never spoke of Walsh, never fidgeted as she sat before him. "But eventually, when I found out what he is – and by the way, Oz is _not_ a honeymoon, let me tell you – I figured it out. I guess becoming the wife of a magical creature transfers more over than just his bank account–something along the lines of magic that breaks curses, if you can believe it." She smirked, and her right eyebrow drifted up just slightly at the irony of her own situation, and the Emma of his mind had never done that.

For a moment, he let himself dare to hope.

"Why are you here?" He asked again, his voice hoarse. He could hear in it how it would break – how _he_ would break – if he were wrong again.

She leaned closer, and he could feel the warmth of her breath in the space between them. Her hand left his knee and came up to rest on his cheek, her thumb tracing the scar there as if to confirm that he, too, was real.

"Don't you know, you idiot pirate?" She whispered, tipping her forehead against his, and the smile on her face…this was not the smile she had given Walsh, the one that knew nothing bad in the world, but rather one that knew there was ill will in the world and managed to smile anyways. _This_ was his Swan.

Her other hand wrapped around his shoulders, and he finally let himself reach up to pull her into his arms. She was solid and warm against him. She was real.

"For you, Killian." Her words came out on a breath, but his heart soared as if she had screamed them to the world. "It's always been you."


End file.
